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110-449: The village was founded in 1784 and developed cotton weaving , coalmining and limestone mining. The name derives from the Scots "Carlins Lowp" (English: "Witches' Leap"), since near the south of the village there are two exposed rock faces about 20 m (66 ft) high facing each other, with a similar distance between them. Folklore maintained that witches would leap from one face to

220-972: A West Germanic language spoken in the province of Limburg in the Netherlands , Belgium and neighboring regions of Germany . It is distinct from German and Dutch, but originates from areas near where both are spoken. Roughly 215 million Europeans (primarily in Southern and Western Europe) are native speakers of Romance languages , the largest groups including: French ( c. 72 million), Italian ( c. 65 million), Spanish ( c. 40 million), Romanian ( c. 24 million), Portuguese ( c. 10 million), Catalan ( c. 7 million), Sicilian ( c. 5 million, also subsumed under Italian), Venetian ( c. 4 million), Galician ( c. 2 million), Sardinian ( c. 1 million), Occitan ( c. 500,000), besides numerous smaller communities. The Romance languages evolved from varieties of Vulgar Latin spoken in

330-404: A boll , or protective case, around the seeds of the cotton plants of the genus Gossypium in the mallow family Malvaceae . The fiber is almost pure cellulose , and can contain minor percentages of waxes , fats , pectins , and water . Under natural conditions, the cotton bolls will increase the dispersal of the seeds. The plant is a shrub native to tropical and subtropical regions around

440-567: A cave near Tehuacán , Mexico, have been dated to as early as 5500 BC, but this date has been challenged. More securely dated is the domestication of Gossypium hirsutum in Mexico between around 3400 and 2300 BC. During this time, people between the Río Santiago and the Río Balsas grew, spun, wove, dyed, and sewed cotton. What they did not use themselves, they sent to their Aztec rulers as tribute, on

550-538: A commercial chain in which raw cotton fibers were (at first) purchased from colonial plantations , processed into cotton cloth in the mills of Lancashire , and then exported on British ships to captive colonial markets in West Africa , India , and China (via Shanghai and Hong Kong). By the 1840s, India was no longer capable of supplying the vast quantities of cotton fibers needed by mechanized British factories, while shipping bulky, low-price cotton from India to Britain

660-704: A deficit spiral that led to the country declaring bankruptcy in 1876, a key factor behind Egypt's occupation by the British Empire in 1882 . During this time, cotton cultivation in the British Empire , especially Australia and India, greatly increased to replace the lost production of the American South. Through tariffs and other restrictions, the British government discouraged the production of cotton cloth in India; rather,

770-607: A farmer who farmed one of the biggest cotton operations. He produced over sixty thousand bales. Cotton remained a key crop in the Southern economy after slavery ended in 1865. Across the South, sharecropping evolved, in which landless farmers worked land owned by others in return for a share of the profits. Some farmers rented the land and bore the production costs themselves. Until mechanical cotton pickers were developed, cotton farmers needed additional labor to hand-pick cotton. Picking cotton

880-484: A great deal of resources would have been required, likely restricting its cultivation to the elite. In the first to third centuries CE, recovered cotton fragments all began to mirror the same style and production method, as seen from the direction of spun cotton and technique of weaving. Cotton textiles also appear in places of high regard, such as on funerary stelae and statues. During the Han dynasty (207 BC - 220 AD), cotton

990-634: A large subfamily of Indo-European, has a relatively small number of languages in Europe, and a small number of speakers ( Romani , c. 1.5 million). However, a number of Indo-Aryan languages not native to Europe are spoken in Europe today. Of the approximately 45 million Europeans speaking non-Indo-European languages, most speak languages within either the Uralic or Turkic families. Still smaller groups — such as Basque ( language isolate ), Semitic languages ( Maltese , c. 0.5 million), and various languages of

1100-578: A lingua franca to peoples in the range of the future nation until the consolidation and unification phases. If the nation becomes internationally influential, its language may become a lingua franca among nations that speak their own national languages. Europe has had no lingua franca ranging over its entire territory spoken by all or most of its populations during any historical period. Some linguae francae of past and present over some of its regions for some of its populations are: Historical attitudes towards linguistic diversity are illustrated by two French laws:

1210-422: A new market for British goods, while the capital amassed from Bengal after its 1757 conquest was used to invest in British industries such as textile manufacturing and greatly increase British wealth. British colonization also forced open the large Indian market to British goods, which could be sold in India without tariffs or duties , compared to local Indian producers who were heavily taxed , while raw cotton

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1320-494: A new revenue system that was biased in favour of higher value cash crops such as cotton and indigo , providing state incentives to grow cash crops, in addition to rising market demand. The largest manufacturing industry in the Mughal Empire was cotton textile manufacturing , which included the production of piece goods , calicos , and muslins , available unbleached and in a variety of colours. The cotton textile industry

1430-635: A number of other cotton seed companies selling GM cotton around the world. About 62% of the GM cotton grown from 1996 to 2011 was insect resistant, 24% stacked product and 14% herbicide resistant. Cotton has gossypol , a toxin that makes it inedible. However, scientists have silenced the gene that produces the toxin, making it a potential food crop. On 17 October 2018, the USDA deregulated GE low-gossypol cotton. Romance-speaking Europe There are over 250 languages indigenous to Europe , and most belong to

1540-660: A province he calls Khotan in Turkestan, today's Xinjiang , where cotton was grown in abundance. The word entered the Romance languages in the mid-12th century, and English a century later. Cotton fabric was known to the ancient Romans as an import, but cotton was rare in the Romance-speaking lands until imports from the Arabic-speaking lands in the later medieval era at transformatively lowered prices. The earliest evidence of

1650-541: A small part of central Sweden). English has a long history of contact with Scandinavian languages, given the immigration of Scandinavians early in the history of Britain, and shares various features with the Scandinavian languages. Even so, especially Dutch and Swedish, but also Danish and Norwegian, have strong vocabulary connections to the German language . Limburgish (also called Limburgan, Limburgian, or Limburgic) Is

1760-442: A state level, whereas others continue to be actively suppressed. Though "there is a widespread belief—among both Deaf people and sign language linguists—that there are sign language families," the actual relationship between sign languages is difficult to ascertain. Concepts and methods used in historical linguistics to describe language families for written and spoken languages are not easily mapped onto signed languages. Some of

1870-559: Is an educational standard defining "the competencies necessary for communication" and related knowledge for the benefit of educators in setting up educational programs. In a 2005 independent survey requested by the EU's Directorate-General for Education and Culture regarding the extent to which major European languages were spoken in member states. The results were published in a 2006 document, "Europeans and Their Languages", or "Eurobarometer 243". In this study, statistically relevant samples of

1980-500: Is divided into three subgroups: Uralic language family is native to northern Eurasia. Finnic languages include Finnish ( c. 5 million) and Estonian ( c. 1 million), as well as smaller languages such as Kven ( c. 8,000). Other languages of the Finno-Permic branch of the family include e.g. Mari (c. 400,000), and the Sami languages ( c. 30,000). The Ugric branch of

2090-607: Is ineffective against many cotton pests, such as plant bugs , stink bugs , and aphids ; depending on circumstances it may still be desirable to use insecticides against these. A 2006 study done by Cornell researchers, the Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy and the Chinese Academy of Science on Bt cotton farming in China found that after seven years these secondary pests that were normally controlled by pesticide had increased, necessitating

2200-598: Is intended to include any language variety with an ISO 639 code. However, it omits sign languages. Because the ISO-639-2 and ISO-639-3 codes have different definitions, this means that some communities of speakers may be listed more than once. For instance, speakers of Bavarian are listed both under "Bavarian" (ISO-639-3 code bar ) as well as under "German" (ISO-639-2 code de ). There are various definitions of Europe , which may or may not include all or parts of Turkey, Cyprus, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. For convenience,

2310-638: Is native to the Indian subcontinent. According to the Columbia Encyclopedia : Cotton has been spun, woven, and dyed since prehistoric times. It clothed the people of ancient India, Egypt, and China. Hundreds of years before the Christian era, cotton textiles were woven in India with matchless skill, and their use spread to the Mediterranean countries. In Iran ( Persia ), the history of cotton dates back to

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2420-508: Is now extinct; the only known surviving East Germanic texts are written in the Gothic language . West Germanic is divided into Anglo-Frisian (including English ), Low German , Low Franconian (including Dutch ) and High German (including Standard German ). The Anglo-Frisian language family is now mostly represented by English (Anglic) , descended from the Old English language spoken by

2530-748: The Italo-Dalmatian languages (sometimes grouped with Eastern Romance), including the Tuscan-derived Italian and numerous local Romance languages in Italy as well as Dalmatian , and the Western Romance languages . The Western Romance languages in turn separate into the Gallo-Romance languages , including Langues d'oïl such as French , the Francoprovencalic languages Arpitan and Faetar ,

2640-559: The Achaemenid era (5th century BC); however, there are few sources about the planting of cotton in pre-Islamic Iran. Cotton cultivation was common in Merv , Ray and Pars . In Persian poems, especially Ferdowsi 's Shahname , there are references to cotton ("panbe" in Persian ). Marco Polo (13th century) refers to the major products of Persia, including cotton. John Chardin , a French traveler of

2750-517: The Anglo-Saxons : The Frisian languages are spoken by about 400,000 (as of 2015 ) Frisians , who live on the southern coast of the North Sea in the Netherlands and Germany . These languages include West Frisian , East Frisian (of which the only surviving dialect is Saterlandic ) and North Frisian . Dutch is spoken throughout the Netherlands , the northern half of Belgium , as well as

2860-838: The Castilian languages . Slavic languages are spoken in large areas of Southern, Central and Eastern Europe . An estimated 315 million people speak a Slavic language, the largest groups being Russian ( c. 110 million in European Russia and adjacent parts of Eastern Europe, Russian forming the largest linguistic community in Europe), Polish ( c. 40 million ), Ukrainian ( c. 33 million ), Serbo-Croatian ( c. 18 million ), Czech ( c. 11 million ), Bulgarian ( c. 8 million ), Slovak ( c. 5 million ), Belarusian (c. 3.7 million ), Slovene ( c. 2.3 million ) and Macedonian ( c. 1.6 million ). Phylogenetically, Slavic

2970-679: The Council of Europe , founded in 1949, which affirms the right of minority language speakers to use their language fully and freely. The Council of Europe is committed to protecting linguistic diversity. Currently all European countries except France , Andorra and Turkey have signed the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities , while Greece , Iceland and Luxembourg have signed it, but have not ratified it; this framework entered into force in 1998. Another European treaty,

3080-623: The Deep South . To acknowledge cotton's place in the history and heritage of Texas, the Texas Legislature designated cotton the official "State Fiber and Fabric of Texas" in 1997. China's Chang'e 4 spacecraft took cotton seeds to the Moon's far side . On 15 January 2019, China announced that a cotton seed sprouted, the first "truly otherworldly plant in history". Inside the Von Kármán Crater ,

3190-466: The Delhi Sultanate . During the late medieval period, cotton became known as an imported fiber in northern Europe, without any knowledge of how it was derived, other than that it was a plant. Because Herodotus had written in his Histories , Book III, 106, that in India trees grew in the wild producing wool, it was assumed that the plant was a tree, rather than a shrub. This aspect is retained in

3300-534: The European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages , was adopted in 1992 under the auspices of the Council of Europe : it entered into force in 1998, and while it is legally binding for 24 countries, France , Iceland , Italy , North Macedonia , Moldova and Russia have chosen to sign without ratifying the convention. The main scripts used in Europe today are the Latin and Cyrillic . The Greek alphabet

3410-730: The Indo-European language family . Out of a total European population of 744 million as of 2018, some 94% are native speakers of an Indo-European language. The three largest phyla of the Indo-European language family in Europe are Romance , Germanic , and Slavic ; they have more than 200 million speakers each, and together account for close to 90% of Europeans. Smaller phyla of Indo-European found in Europe include Hellenic ( Greek , c. 13 million), Baltic ( c. 4.5 million), Albanian ( c. 7.5 million), Celtic ( c. 4 million), and Armenian ( c. 4 million). Indo-Aryan , though

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3520-518: The Industrial Revolution in Britain provided a great boost to cotton manufacture, as textiles emerged as Britain's leading export. In 1738, Lewis Paul and John Wyatt , of Birmingham , England, patented the roller spinning machine, as well as the flyer-and-bobbin system for drawing cotton to a more even thickness using two sets of rollers that traveled at different speeds. Later, the invention of

3630-461: The James Hargreaves ' spinning jenny in 1764, Richard Arkwright 's spinning frame in 1769 and Samuel Crompton 's spinning mule in 1775 enabled British spinners to produce cotton yarn at much higher rates. From the late 18th century on, the British city of Manchester acquired the nickname " Cottonopolis " due to the cotton industry's omnipresence within the city, and Manchester's role as

3740-764: The Latin alphabet used in Europe: Antiqua and Fraktur . Fraktur was used most for German, Estonian, Latvian, Norwegian and Danish whereas Antiqua was used for Italian, Spanish, French, Polish, Portuguese, English, Romanian, Swedish and Finnish. The Fraktur variant was banned by Hitler in 1941, having been described as " Schwabacher Jewish letters". Other scripts have historically been in use in Europe, including Phoenician, from which modern Latin letters descend, Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs on Egyptian artefacts traded during Antiquity, various runic systems used in Northern Europe preceding Christianisation, and Arabic during

3850-507: The Nord-Pas de Calais region of France . The traditional dialects of the Lower Rhine region of Germany are linguistically more closely related to Dutch than to modern German. In Belgian and French contexts, Dutch is sometimes referred to as Flemish . Dutch dialects are numerous and varied. German is spoken throughout Germany , Austria , Liechtenstein , much of Switzerland (including

3960-724: The Ordonnance de Villers-Cotterêts (1539), which said that every document in France should be written in French (neither in Latin nor in Occitan) and the Loi Toubon (1994), which aimed to eliminate anglicisms from official documents. States and populations within a state have often resorted to war to settle their differences. There have been attempts to prevent such hostilities: two such initiatives were promoted by

4070-760: The Rhaeto-Romance languages , and the Gallo-Italic languages ; the Occitano-Romance languages , grouped with either Gallo-Romance or East Iberian, including Occitanic languages such as Occitan and Gardiol , and Catalan ; Aragonese , grouped in with either Occitano-Romance or West Iberian, and finally the West Iberian languages , including the Astur-Leonese languages , the Galician-Portuguese languages , and

4180-617: The national language , and a number of language academies were established: 1582 Accademia della Crusca in Florence, 1617 Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft in Weimar, 1635 Académie française in Paris, 1713 Real Academia Española in Madrid. Language became increasingly linked to nation as opposed to culture, and was also used to promote religious and ethnic identity: e.g. different Bible translations in

4290-533: The 17th century who visited Safavid Persia , spoke approvingly of the vast cotton farms of Persia. Cotton ( Gossypium herbaceum Linnaeus) may have been domesticated 5000 BC in eastern Sudan near the Middle Nile Basin region, where cotton cloth was being produced. Around the 4th century BC, the cultivation of cotton and the knowledge of its spinning and weaving in Meroë reached a high level. The export of textiles

4400-503: The 1840s. Indian cotton textiles, particularly those from Bengal , continued to maintain a competitive advantage up until the 19th century. In order to compete with India, Britain invested in labour-saving technical progress, while implementing protectionist policies such as bans and tariffs to restrict Indian imports. At the same time, the East India Company's rule in India contributed to its deindustrialization , opening up

4510-490: The 1900s. While cotton fibers occur naturally in colors of white, brown, pink and green, fears of contaminating the genetics of white cotton have led many cotton-growing locations to ban the growing of colored cotton varieties. The word "cotton" has Arabic origins , derived from the Arabic word قطن ( qutn or qutun ). This was the usual word for cotton in medieval Arabic . Marco Polo in chapter 2 in his book, describes

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4620-499: The 19th century. India's cotton-processing sector changed during EIC expansion in India in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. From focusing on supplying the British market to supplying East Asia with raw cotton. As the Artisan produced textiles were no longer competitive with those produced Industrially, and Europe preferring the cheaper slave produced, long staple American, and Egyptian cottons, for its own materials. The advent of

4730-661: The British to cheap calico and chintz cloth on the restoration of the monarchy in the 1660s. Initially imported as a novelty side line, from its spice trading posts in Asia, the cheap colourful cloth proved popular and overtook the EIC's spice trade by value in the late 17th century. The EIC embraced the demand, particularly for calico , by expanding its factories in Asia and producing and importing cloth in bulk, creating competition for domestic woollen and linen textile producers. The impacted weavers, spinners, dyers, shepherds and farmers objected and

4840-620: The Caucasus — account for less than 1% of the European population among them. Immigration has added sizeable communities of speakers of African and Asian languages, amounting to about 4% of the population, with Arabic being the most widely spoken of them. Five languages have more than 50 million native speakers in Europe: Russian , German , French , Italian , and English . Russian is the most-spoken native language in Europe, and English has

4950-615: The Egyptian cotton industry. By the time of the American Civil war annual exports had reached $ 16 million (120,000 bales), which rose to $ 56 million by 1864, primarily due to the loss of the Confederate supply on the world market. Exports continued to grow even after the reintroduction of US cotton, produced now by a paid workforce, and Egyptian exports reached 1.2 million bales a year by 1903. The English East India Company (EIC) introduced

5060-442: The Mughal era. It was reported that, with an Indian cotton gin, which is half machine and half tool, one man and one woman could clean 28 pounds (13 kg) of cotton per day. With a modified Forbes version, one man and a boy could produce 250 pounds (110 kg) per day. If oxen were used to power 16 of these machines, and a few people's labour was used to feed them, they could produce as much work as 750 people did formerly. In

5170-412: The Northern and Southern hemispheres, but a large proportion of the cotton grown today is cultivated in areas with less rainfall that obtain the water from irrigation. Production of the crop for a given year usually starts soon after harvesting the preceding autumn. Cotton is naturally a perennial but is grown as an annual to help control pests. Planting time in spring in the Northern hemisphere varies from

5280-424: The United States, even with the use of humans as slave labor. The gin that Whitney manufactured (the Holmes design) reduced the hours down to just a dozen or so per bale. Although Whitney patented his own design for a cotton gin, he manufactured a prior design from Henry Odgen Holmes, for which Holmes filed a patent in 1796. Improving technology and increasing control of world markets allowed British traders to develop

5390-411: The backbone of the southern American economy. In the United States, cultivating and harvesting cotton became the leading occupation of slaves . During the American Civil War , American cotton exports slumped due to a Union blockade on Southern ports , and because of a strategic decision by the Confederate government to cut exports, hoping to force Britain to recognize the Confederacy or enter

5500-424: The basis of a new indigenous industry, initially producing Fustian for the domestic market, though more importantly triggering the development of a series of mechanised spinning and weaving technologies, to process the material. This mechanised production was concentrated in new cotton mills , which slowly expanded until by the beginning of the 1770s seven thousand bales of cotton were imported annually, and pressure

5610-519: The beginning of February to the beginning of June. The area of the United States known as the South Plains is the largest contiguous cotton-growing region in the world. While dryland (non-irrigated) cotton is successfully grown in this region, consistent yields are only produced with heavy reliance on irrigation water drawn from the Ogallala Aquifer . Since cotton is somewhat salt and drought tolerant, this makes it an attractive crop for arid and semiarid regions. As water resources get tighter around

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5720-434: The calico question became one of the major issues of National politics between the 1680s and the 1730s. Parliament began to see a decline in domestic textile sales, and an increase in imported textiles from places like China and India . Seeing the East India Company and their textile importation as a threat to domestic textile businesses, Parliament passed the 1700 Calico Act, blocking the importation of cotton cloth. As there

5830-427: The capsule and seeds sit inside the Chang'e 4 lander. Successful cultivation of cotton requires a long frost -free period, plenty of sunshine, and a moderate rainfall, usually from 50 to 100 cm (19.5 to 39.5 in). Soils usually need to be fairly heavy , although the level of nutrients does not need to be exceptional. In general, these conditions are met within the seasonally dry tropics and subtropics in

5940-414: The chancellery of Meissen in Saxony, Middle German, and the chancellery of Prague in Bohemia ("Common German")). But several other nations also began to develop a standard variety in the 16th century. Europe has had a number of languages that were considered linguae francae over some ranges for some periods according to some historians. Typically in the rise of a national language the new language becomes

6050-455: The coast for large supplies of fish. The Spanish who came to Mexico and Peru in the early 16th century found the people growing cotton and wearing clothing made of it. The Greeks and the Arabs were not familiar with cotton until the Wars of Alexander the Great , as his contemporary Megasthenes told Seleucus I Nicator of "there being trees on which wool grows" in "Indica." This may be a reference to "tree cotton", Gossypium arboreum , which

6160-448: The current understandings of sign language relationships, however, provide some reasonable estimates about potential sign language families: In the Middle Ages the two most important defining elements of Europe were Christianitas and Latinitas . The earliest dictionaries were glossaries: more or less structured lists of lexical pairs (in alphabetical order or according to conceptual fields). The Latin-German (Latin-Bavarian) Abrogans

6270-443: The dual-roller gin was prevalent throughout the Mediterranean cotton trade by the 16th century. This mechanical device was, in some areas, driven by water power. The earliest clear illustrations of the spinning wheel come from the Islamic world in the eleventh century. The earliest unambiguous reference to a spinning wheel in India is dated to 1350, suggesting that the spinning wheel was likely introduced from Iran to India during

6380-457: The early 19th century had the fifth most productive cotton industry in the world, in terms of the number of spindles per capita. The industry was initially driven by machinery that relied on traditional energy sources, such as animal power , water wheels , and windmills , which were also the principal energy sources in Western Europe up until around 1870. It was under Muhammad Ali in the early 19th century that steam engines were introduced to

6490-487: The early 19th century, a Frenchman named M. Jumel proposed to the great ruler of Egypt, Mohamed Ali Pasha , that he could earn a substantial income by growing an extra-long staple Maho ( Gossypium barbadense ) cotton, in Lower Egypt , for the French market. Mohamed Ali Pasha accepted the proposition and granted himself the monopoly on the sale and export of cotton in Egypt ; and later dictated cotton should be grown in preference to other crops. Egypt under Muhammad Ali in

6600-421: The endes of its branches. These branches were so pliable that they bent down to allow the lambs to feed when they are hungry." (See Vegetable Lamb of Tartary .) Cotton manufacture was introduced to Europe during the Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula and Sicily . The knowledge of cotton weaving was spread to northern Italy in the 12th century, when Sicily was conquered by the Normans , and consequently to

6710-435: The era of the Ottoman Empire. Hungarian rovás was used by the Hungarian people in the early Middle Ages, but it was gradually replaced with the Latin-based Hungarian alphabet when Hungary became a kingdom, though it was revived in the 20th century and has certain marginal, but growing area of usage since then. The European Union (as of 2021) had 27 member states accounting for a population of 447 million, or about 60% of

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6820-480: The fifth millennium BC have been found in the Indus Valley civilization , as well as fabric remnants dated back to 4200 BC in Peru . Although cultivated since antiquity, it was the invention of the cotton gin that lowered the cost of production that led to its widespread use, and it is the most widely used natural fiber cloth in clothing today. Current estimates for world production are about 25 million tonnes or 110 million bales annually, accounting for 2.5% of

6930-421: The fourth largest GM cotton crop area of 2.6 million hectares in 2011. The initial introduction of GM cotton proved to be a success in Australia – the yields were equivalent to the non-transgenic varieties and the crop used much less pesticide to produce (85% reduction). The subsequent introduction of a second variety of GM cotton led to increases in GM cotton production until 95% of the Australian cotton crop

7040-496: The heart of the global cotton trade. Production capacity in Britain and the United States was improved by the invention of the modern cotton gin by the American Eli Whitney in 1793. Before the development of cotton gins, the cotton fibers had to be pulled from the seeds tediously by hand. By the late 1700s, a number of crude ginning machines had been developed. However, to produce a bale of cotton required over 600 hours of human labor, making large-scale production uneconomical in

7150-425: The language family is represented in Europe by the Hungarian language ( c. 13 million), historically introduced with the Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin of the 9th century. The Samoyedic Nenets language is spoken in Nenets Autonomous Okrug of Russia, located in the far northeastern corner of Europe (as delimited by the Ural Mountains ). Several dozen manual languages exist across Europe, with

7260-437: The languages and associated statistics for all five of these countries are grouped together on this page, as they are usually presented at a national, rather than subnational, level. Recent (post–1945) immigration to Europe introduced substantial communities of speakers of non-European languages. The largest such communities include Arabic speakers (see Arabs in Europe ) and Turkish speakers (beyond European Turkey and

7370-499: The largest number of speakers in total, including some 200 million speakers of English as a second or foreign language . (See English language in Europe .) The Indo-European language family is descended from Proto-Indo-European , which is believed to have been spoken thousands of years ago. Early speakers of Indo-European daughter languages most likely expanded into Europe with the incipient Bronze Age , around 4,000 years ago ( Bell-Beaker culture ). The Germanic languages make up

7480-429: The main pests in commercial cotton are lepidopteran larvae, which are killed by the Bt protein in the transgenic cotton they eat. This eliminates the need to use large amounts of broad-spectrum insecticides to kill lepidopteran pests (some of which have developed pyrethroid resistance). This spares natural insect predators in the farm ecology and further contributes to noninsecticide pest management. However, Bt cotton

7590-459: The member state may communicate with the EU in any of the designated languages, and view "EU regulations and other legislative documents" in that language. The European Union and the Council of Europe have been collaborating in education of member populations in languages for "the promotion of plurilingualism" among EU member states. The joint document, " Common European Framework of Reference for Languages : Learning, Teaching, Assessment (CEFR)",

7700-423: The most widespread sign language family being the Francosign languages , with its languages found in countries from Iberia to the Balkans and the Baltics . Accurate historical information of sign and tactile languages is difficult to come by, with folk histories noting the existence signing communities across Europe hundreds of years ago. British Sign Language (BSL) and French Sign Language (LSF) are probably

7810-405: The name for cotton in several Germanic languages, such as German Baumwolle , which translates as "tree wool" ( Baum means "tree"; Wolle means "wool"). Noting its similarities to wool, people in the region could only imagine that cotton must be produced by plant-borne sheep. John Mandeville , writing in 1350, stated as fact that "There grew there [India] a wonderful tree which bore tiny lambs on

7920-458: The nearby paper-mills in Penicuik . The Allan Ramsay Hotel was built as a wool warehouse in 1792 and converted to an inn in the mid 19th century, honing in on the local connections to Allan Ramsay . It was run by the granddaughter of Alexander Alexander, Mrs Veitch, known as Mother Veitch. Cotton Cotton (from Arabic al-qutn ) is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in

8030-469: The new textile industries of the Northeastern United States and northwestern Europe. In 1860 the slogan " Cotton is king " characterized the attitude of Southern leaders toward this monocrop in that Europe would support an independent Confederate States of America in 1861 in order to protect the supply of cotton it needed for its very large textile industry. Russell Griffin of California was

8140-969: The northeast areas bordering on Germany and Austria), northern Italy ( South Tyrol ), Luxembourg , the East Cantons of Belgium and the Alsace and Lorraine regions of France . There are several groups of German dialects: Low German is spoken in various regions throughout Northern Germany and the northern and eastern parts of the Netherlands. It is an official language in Germany . It may be separated into West Low German and East Low German . The North Germanic languages are spoken in Nordic countries and include Swedish ( Sweden and parts of Finland ), Danish ( Denmark ), Norwegian ( Norway ), Icelandic ( Iceland ), Faroese ( Faroe Islands ), and Elfdalian (in

8250-479: The oldest confirmed, continuously used sign languages. Alongside German Sign Language (DGS) according to Ethnologue , these three have the most numbers of signers, though very few institutions take appropriate statistics on contemporary signing populations, making legitimate data hard to find. Notably, few European sign languages have overt connections with the local majority/oral languages, aside from standard language contact and borrowing , meaning grammatically

8360-455: The other, over the chasm, for entertainment of an evening. The current village was planned and laid out in 1784 by Robert Brown, advocate, laird of Newhall, as two rows of single storey cottages facing each other across the Biggar to Edinburgh road. These housed weavers linked to mills just to the north. In 1800 Alexander Alexander of West Linton set up water-powered mill to create felts for use in

8470-496: The population in each country were asked to fill out a survey form concerning the languages that they spoke with sufficient competency "to be able to have a conversation". The following is a table of European languages. The number of speakers as a first or second language (L1 and L2 speakers) listed are speakers in Europe only; see list of languages by number of native speakers and list of languages by total number of speakers for global estimates on numbers of speakers. The list

8580-425: The population of Europe. The European Union has designated by agreement with the member states 24 languages as "official and working": Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish and Swedish. This designation provides member states with two "entitlements":

8690-574: The predominant language family in Western, Northern and Central Europe . It is estimated that over 500 million Europeans are speakers of Germanic languages , the largest groups being German ( c. 95 million), English ( c. 400 million) , Dutch ( c. 24 million), Swedish ( c. 10 million), Danish ( c. 6 million), Norwegian ( c. 5 million) and Limburgish (c. 1.3 million). There are two extant major sub-divisions: West Germanic and North Germanic . A third group, East Germanic ,

8800-466: The raw fiber was sent to England for processing. The Indian Mahatma Gandhi described the process: In the United States, growing Southern cotton generated significant wealth and capital for the antebellum South, as well as raw material for Northern textile industries. Before 1865 the cotton was largely produced through the labor of enslaved African Americans. It enriched both the Southern landowners and

8910-604: The region. In the Meroitic Period (beginning 3rd century BCE), many cotton textiles have been recovered, preserved due to favorable arid conditions. Most of these fabric fragments come from Lower Nubia, and the cotton textiles account for 85% of the archaeological textiles from Classic/Late Meroitic sites. Due to these arid conditions, cotton, a plant that usually thrives moderate rainfall and richer soils, requires extra irrigation and labor in Sudanese climate conditions. Therefore,

9020-651: The rest of Europe. The spinning wheel , introduced to Europe circa 1350, improved the speed of cotton spinning. By the 15th century, Venice , Antwerp , and Haarlem were important ports for cotton trade, and the sale and transportation of cotton fabrics had become very profitable. Under the Mughal Empire , which ruled in the Indian subcontinent from the early 16th century to the early 18th century, Indian cotton production increased, in terms of both raw cotton and cotton textiles. The Mughals introduced agrarian reforms such as

9130-462: The same language for Catholics and Protestants. The first languages whose standardisation was promoted included Italian ( questione della lingua : Modern Tuscan/Florentine vs. Old Tuscan/Florentine vs. Venetian → Modern Florentine + archaic Tuscan + Upper Italian), French (the standard is based on Parisian), English (the standard is based on the London dialect) and (High) German (based on the dialects of

9240-504: The scale of ~116 million pounds (53,000 tonnes) annually. In Peru , cultivation of the indigenous cotton species Gossypium barbadense has been dated, from a find in Ancon, to c.  4200 BC , and was the backbone of the development of coastal cultures such as the Norte Chico , Moche , and Nazca . Cotton was grown upriver, made into nets, and traded with fishing villages along

9350-537: The sign languages and the oral languages of Europe are quite distinct from one another. Due to (visual/aural) modality differences, most sign languages are named for the larger ethnic nation in which they are spoken, plus the words "sign language", rendering what is spoken across much of France , Wallonia and Romandy as French Sign Language or LSF for: l angue des s ignes f rançaise . Recognition of non-oral languages varies widely from region to region. Some countries afford legal recognition, even to official on

9460-721: The use of cotton in the Old World , dated to 5500 BC and preserved in copper beads, has been found at the Neolithic site of Mehrgarh , at the foot of the Bolan Pass in ancient India , today in Balochistan Pakistan. Fragments of cotton textiles have been found at Mohenjo-daro and other sites of the Bronze Age Indus Valley civilization , and cotton may have been an important export from it. Cotton bolls discovered in

9570-471: The use of pesticides at similar levels to non-Bt cotton and causing less profit for farmers because of the extra expense of GM seeds. However, a 2009 study by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Stanford University and Rutgers University refuted this. They concluded that the GM cotton effectively controlled bollworm. The secondary pests were mostly miridae (plant bugs) whose increase was related to local temperature and rainfall and only continued to increase in half

9680-523: The various parts of the Roman Empire in Late Antiquity . Latin was itself part of the (otherwise extinct) Italic branch of Indo-European. Romance languages are divided phylogenetically into Italo-Western , Eastern Romance (including Romanian ) and Sardinian . The Romance-speaking area of Europe is occasionally referred to as Latin Europe . Italo-Western can be further broken down into

9790-491: The villages and then taken to towns in the form of yarn to be woven into cloth textiles, was advanced by the diffusion of the spinning wheel across India shortly before the Mughal era, lowering the costs of yarn and helping to increase demand for cotton. The diffusion of the spinning wheel, and the incorporation of the worm gear and crank handle into the roller cotton gin, led to greatly expanded Indian cotton textile production during

9900-500: The villages studied. Moreover, the increase in insecticide use for the control of these secondary insects was far smaller than the reduction in total insecticide use due to Bt cotton adoption. A 2012 Chinese study concluded that Bt cotton halved the use of pesticides and doubled the level of ladybirds, lacewings and spiders. The International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA) said that, worldwide, GM cotton

10010-535: The war. The Lancashire Cotton Famine prompted the main purchasers of cotton, Britain and France , to turn to Egyptian cotton. British and French traders invested heavily in cotton plantations. The Egyptian government of Viceroy Isma'il took out substantial loans from European bankers and stock exchanges. After the American Civil War ended in 1865, British and French traders abandoned Egyptian cotton and returned to cheap American exports, sending Egypt into

10120-413: The world's arable land . India is the world's largest producer of cotton. The United States has been the largest exporter for many years. There are four commercially grown species of cotton, all domesticated in antiquity: Hybrid varieties are also cultivated. The two New World cotton species account for the vast majority of modern cotton production, but the two Old World species were widely used before

10230-571: The world, economies that rely on it face difficulties and conflict, as well as potential environmental problems. For example, improper cropping and irrigation practices have led to desertification in areas of Uzbekistan , where cotton is a major export. In the days of the Soviet Union , the Aral Sea was tapped for agricultural irrigation, largely of cotton, and now salination is widespread. Cotton can also be cultivated to have colors other than

10340-544: The world, including the Americas, Africa, Egypt and India. The greatest diversity of wild cotton species is found in Mexico, followed by Australia and Africa. Cotton was independently domesticated in the Old and New Worlds. The fiber is most often spun into yarn or thread and used to make a soft, breathable , and durable textile . The use of cotton for fabric is known to date to prehistoric times; fragments of cotton fabric dated to

10450-517: The world. A long-term study on the economic impacts of Bt cotton in India, published in the Journal PNAS in 2012, showed that Bt cotton has increased yields, profits, and living standards of smallholder farmers. The U.S. GM cotton crop was 4.0 million hectares in 2011 the second largest area in the world, the Chinese GM cotton crop was third largest by area with 3.9 million hectares and Pakistan had

10560-523: The yellowish off-white typical of modern commercial cotton fibers. Naturally colored cotton can come in red, green, and several shades of brown. The water footprint of cotton fibers is substantially larger than for most other plant fibers. Cotton is also known as a thirsty crop; on average, globally, cotton requires 8,000–10,000 liters of water for one kilogram of cotton, and in dry areas, it may require even more such as in some areas of India, it may need 22,500 liters. Genetically modified (GM) cotton

10670-471: Was GM in 2009 making Australia the country with the fifth largest GM cotton crop in the world. Other GM cotton growing countries in 2011 were Argentina, Myanmar, Burkina Faso, Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, South Africa and Costa Rica. Cotton has been genetically modified for resistance to glyphosate a broad-spectrum herbicide discovered by Monsanto which also sells some of the Bt cotton seeds to farmers. There are also

10780-547: Was a source of income for families across the South. Rural and small town school systems had split vacations so children could work in the fields during "cotton-picking." During the middle 20th century, employment in cotton farming fell, as machines began to replace laborers and the South's rural labor force dwindled during the World Wars. Cotton remains a major export of the United States, with large farms in California, Arizona and

10890-434: Was among the first. A new wave of lexicography can be seen from the late 15th century onwards (after the introduction of the printing press, with the growing interest in standardisation of languages). The concept of the nation state began to emerge in the early modern period . Nations adopted particular dialects as their national language. This, together with improved communications, led to official efforts to standardise

11000-838: Was derived from the Phoenician alphabet , and Latin was derived from the Greek via the Old Italic alphabet . In the Early Middle Ages, Ogham was used in Ireland and runes (derived from Old Italic script) in Scandinavia. Both were replaced in general use by the Latin alphabet by the Late Middle Ages. The Cyrillic script was derived from the Greek with the first texts appearing around 940 AD. Around 1900 there were mainly two typeface variants of

11110-459: Was developed to reduce the heavy reliance on pesticides. The bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) naturally produces a chemical harmful only to a small fraction of insects, most notably the larvae of moths and butterflies , beetles , and flies , and harmless to other forms of life. The gene coding for Bt toxin has been inserted into cotton, causing cotton, called Bt cotton , to produce this natural insecticide in its tissues. In many regions,

11220-401: Was grown by Chinese peoples in the southern Chinese province of Yunnan . Egyptians grew and spun cotton in the first seven centuries of the Christian era. Handheld roller cotton gins had been used in India since the 6th century, and was then introduced to other countries from there. Between the 12th and 14th centuries, dual-roller gins appeared in India and China. The Indian version of

11330-418: Was imported from India without tariffs to British factories which manufactured textiles from Indian cotton, giving Britain a monopoly over India's large market and cotton resources. India served as both a significant supplier of raw goods to British manufacturers and a large captive market for British manufactured goods. Britain eventually surpassed India as the world's leading cotton textile manufacturer in

11440-451: Was invented in India during the early Delhi Sultanate era of the 13th–14th centuries, came into use in the Mughal Empire some time around the 16th century, and is still used in India through to the present day. Another innovation, the incorporation of the crank handle in the cotton gin, first appeared in India some time during the late Delhi Sultanate or the early Mughal Empire. The production of cotton, which may have largely been spun in

11550-443: Was no punishment for continuing to sell cotton cloth, smuggling of the popular material became commonplace. In 1721, dissatisfied with the results of the first act, Parliament passed a stricter addition, this time prohibiting the sale of most cottons, imported and domestic (exempting only thread Fustian and raw cotton). The exemption of raw cotton from the prohibition initially saw 2 thousand bales of cotton imported annually, to become

11660-547: Was one of the sources of wealth for Meroë. Ancient Nubia had a "culture of cotton" of sorts, evidenced by physical evidence of cotton processing tools and the presence of cattle in certain areas. Some researchers propose that cotton was important to the Nubian economy for its use in contact with the neighboring Egyptians. Aksumite King Ezana boasted in his inscription that he destroyed large cotton plantations in Meroë during his conquest of

11770-422: Was planted on an area of 25 million hectares in 2011. This was 69% of the worldwide total area planted in cotton. GM cotton acreage in India grew at a rapid rate, increasing from 50,000 hectares in 2002 to 10.6 million hectares in 2011. The total cotton area in India was 12.1 million hectares in 2011, so GM cotton was grown on 88% of the cotton area. This made India the country with the largest area of GM cotton in

11880-400: Was put on Parliament, by the new mill owners, to remove the prohibition on the production and sale of pure cotton cloth, as they could easily compete with anything the EIC could import. The acts were repealed in 1774, triggering a wave of investment in mill-based cotton spinning and production, doubling the demand for raw cotton within a couple of years, and doubling it again every decade, into

11990-592: Was responsible for a large part of the empire's international trade. India had a 25% share of the global textile trade in the early 18th century. Indian cotton textiles were the most important manufactured goods in world trade in the 18th century, consumed across the world from the Americas to Japan . The most important center of cotton production was the Bengal Subah province, particularly around its capital city of Dhaka . The worm gear roller cotton gin , which

12100-456: Was time-consuming and expensive. This, coupled with the emergence of American cotton as a superior type (due to the longer, stronger fibers of the two domesticated native American species, Gossypium hirsutum and Gossypium barbadense ), encouraged British traders to purchase cotton from plantations in the United States and in the Caribbean . By the mid-19th century, " King Cotton " had become

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